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alarm monitoring

When I spoke last month to SentryNet’s Kurt Erdman and Alain Jamet, national sales manager and vice president of operations, respectively, both characterized their central station as an “activity hub” that would perform the dual task of promoting new technologies and keeping security professionals attuned to broader trends affecting the industry.

Given that approach, it’s not surprising that the information the company blasts out often reads like a hybrid between a news release and, well, news. A good example of this surfaced last week when the company summarized an episode in which all the interdependent parts of a security plan interacted properly to snuff out a crime in progress.

At 1:30 a.m. on August 11, an alarm was received from the Nashville Armory, a popular firearm complex housing a shooting range and a stockpile of weapons and ammo. Responding to the alarm, police pursued and caught a pair of burglars who had managed to make off with a haul of weapons and ammo valued at more than $10,000. Video surveillance recorded both subjects carrying out the crime, the SentryNet release noted, citing a report from the local Fox affiliate in Nashville.

The summary goes on to highlight myriad behind-the-scenes measures taken to help foil the crime, crediting everyone from the end users, the technicians, a locally owned alarm company (C.O. Christian and Sons), an integrator (Herring Technology), and SentryNet’s own central station and staff with performing their specific duties with aplomb.

“Those of us who are in this business understand the synergy and combined effort that took place behind the scenes in this story,” the SentryNet release noted. Well said. A successful security operation is an ecosystem, sustained by the efforts of people who sometimes never physically cross paths. It’s good to see that fact highlighted, and the credit for success shared.

More companies will soon be able to reap the benefits of the Automated Secure Alarm Protocol, as the CSAA moves into its next stage of deployment by extending the program to non-charter members.

So far, the 100 CSAA members that have helped fund the program have been able to contract and connect to the system, which is designed to increase the efficiency and reliability of emergency electronic signals form central stations to Public Safety Answering Points, commonly known as PSAPs. In total, 42 companies have contracted for connection, though some do business in areas that do not yet have an active PSAP.

Currently, seven PSAPs are enrolled in the ASAP program, with Washington, D.C. and Houston representing the largest urban areas. In a recent press release, the CSAA said it expects to add Boston and Seattle to the mix in the coming year, along with the entire state of Delaware.

Later that month, Guardian Protection Services, based in Warrendale, Pa., in conjunction with the CSAA announced it was coming online with the program in Richmond, Va., where it has a solid presence. Jason Bradley, director of central station operations at Guardian, told me that implementation in Washington, D.C. was the next step.

It’s no exaggeration to say broader adoption of the ASAP to PSAP program will transform the industry, making signal transmission a faster and more informative process. To be sure, the program is expanding at a steady pace, and I imagine it’ll be sooner than we think before dealers are going to expect centrals, where possible, to join the ranks.

Security Electronics, a home and business security company based in Muskego, Wis., near Milwaukee, recently purchased the accounts of Milwaukee Dynamic Security, a company headquartered on the north end of the Milwaukee metro area.

In a news release from the Davis Mergers and Acquisitions Group, which assisted Milwaukee Dynamic Security in the transaction, Don Larson, founder of Security Electronics, suggested the backyard account purchase will unite a pair of like-minded companies with similar regional roots.

The companies are also compatible on the technical level.

“We both are in the same central monitoring facility and use much of the same equipment,” Larson noted in the release.

Jim Veith, owner of Milwaukee Dynamic, will remain with the company during the transition period, after which he plans to retire, the release noted.

In the coming days I plan to connect with personnel at Security Electronics to discuss the implications of the deal, and how the backyard account purchase fits into the company’s near- and long-term strategies.

DALLAS—Boosted by the 2013 Security Networks acquisition, Ascent Capital, the holding company for Monitronics, a provider of home security alarm monitoring services based here, posted net revenue increases of 31.7 percent and 32.2 percent for the three and six months, re

MUSKEGO, Wis.—Security Electronics, a home and business security company based here, has purchased the accounts of Milwaukee Dynamic Security, according to a news release from the Davis Mergers and Acquisitions group, which assisted Milwaukee Dynamic Security in the tran

LONGMONT, Colo.—On the central station side, effective and timely use of information can make the difference between a better or worse outcome. It’s within this discussion that a tool like Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, can look like a difference maker, both for central stations and subscribers, Tim Auen, director of mobility products at Intrado, a provider of emergency communications infrastructure, told Security Systems News.

Tech publication Wired magazine may not focus too closely on alarm monitoring or residential security, but it does devote a good deal of ink to assessing network security threats, no matter what the context.

Just last month a writer for the magazine, Mat Honan, sketched a funny, dystopian picture of the connected home in revolt, commandeered by wayward hackers on some perverse quest for Internet notoriety. Identifiable only by screen names evoking bad cyberpunk movies, these lonesome code junkies are intent on doing everything from dousing homes with sprinkler systems to invading your privacy through in-home network cameras .

The piece, titled “The Nightmare on Connected Home Street,” is supposed to seem nearly implausible. The narrator is jarred awake at four a.m. by the pulse of dub step music exploding from his connected pillow. The piece ends, a few hours later, with the bare and awesomely memorable paragraph: “The skylights open up. The toaster switches on. I hear the shower kick in from the other room. It’s morning.”

It’s all just a thought experiment, of course, but the piece is thought-provoking and well worth a read.

Interestingly enough, about a month later, Wired turned its attention to security again, this time focusing on vulnerabilities that have nothing to do with IP devices. This time, the article dealt with security concerns related to wireless home alarms, which, according to a pair of researchers cited in the article, could be compromised—the alarms either being suppressed (via “jamming”) or made to deliver false signals. The researchers found identical problems among a number of brands.

The issue apparently has to do with radio frequency signals. While the conversation is understandable enough for a layman, it can drift into the arcane. In sum, the researchers found that the systems “fail to encrypt or authenticate the signals being sent from sensors to control panels," the report said, “making it easy for someone to intercept the data, decipher the commands, and play them back to control panels at will.” Would-be malefactors, the report says, can do this relatively easily.

A vulnerability is a vulnerability, and certainly no security company wants there to be any possibility of a system being hacked. But it should probably be mentioned that while these techniques may come across as elementary to the reading community of Wired Magazine, these methods would probably be, for your run-of-the-mill burglar, well above the norm from a sophistication standpoint.

The researchers cited in the article—Logan Lamb and Silvio Cesare—plan to present their findings at the Black Hat security conference, a computer security conference scheduled next week in Las Vegas. For my part, I’ll be eager to hear more about their findings and to see what kind of impact the research could have.

Tech publication Wired magazine may not focus too closely on alarm monitoring or residential security, but it does devote a good deal of ink to assessing network security threats, no matter what the context.

Just last month a writer for the magazine, Mat Honan, painted a funny dystopian sketch of the connected home in revolt, commandeered by morally wayward hackers on some perverse quest for Internet notoriety. Identifiable only by screen names evoking bad cyberpunk films from the 90s, these lonesome code junkies are intent on doing everything from dousing homes by activating sprinkler systems to invading your privacy in all the imaginable ways in a home amply stocked with network cameras.

The piece, titled “The Nightmare on Connected Home Street,” is of course meant to be hysterical: The narrator is jarred awake at four a.m. by the blaring pulse of dub step music exploding from his connected pillow. The vignette ends, a few hours later, with a bare and awesomely memorable paragraph: “The skylights open up. The toaster switches on. I hear the shower kick in from the other room. It’s morning.”

It’s all just a thought experiment, but the piece is entertaining and well worth a read.

Interestingly enough, about a month later, Wired turned its attention to security again, this time focusing on concerns that, surprisingly, have nothing to do with Internet connected devices. This time, the article dealt with security vulnerabilities related to wireless home alarms, which, according to a pair of researchers cited in the article, could be comprised—the alarm being either suppressed (via “jamming”) or made to deliver false signals. The researchers found identical problems with a number of brands.

The issue, according to the report, has to do with radio frequency signals. While the conversation is understandable for a layman, it can seem a bit arcane. In sum, the researchers found that the systems “fail to encrypt or authenticate the signals being sent from sensors to control panels,” according to the report, “making it easy for someone to intercept the data, decipher the commands, and play them back to control panels at will.” Would-be malefactors, the report says, can do this relatively easily.

The researchers cited in the article—Logan Lamb and Silvio Cesare—plan to present their findings at the Black Hat security conference, a computer security conference held in Las Vegas next week. I’m eager to here more about their findings and to see what kind of impact the research could have.